


Shockwave

by kallah



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-07
Updated: 2011-08-25
Packaged: 2017-10-12 12:24:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/124788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kallah/pseuds/kallah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Series of one-shots about the aftermath of the destruction of Raccoon.  Generally in the continuity of the novels.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The bar was packed for a Thursday night, but the crowd was in a good mood so far; Billy figured any real trouble would start later. He leaned on the wall for a minute, checking on a crowd of kids celebrating somebody's birthday; they were looking like goofy drunks instead of mean ones, and he moved on, pausing to scare some asshole hassling Melanie. The night went on pretty smoothly; the kids got goofier, one of them commandering the bar's battered old piano for a while. Not bad for somebody that drunk, but he was still damn glad when they staggered out in search of cabs.

There was a sudden round of shouting; Billy looked for the source of the trouble, and then realized people were pointing at the TV tuned to the news network. Some big fire, nothing that exciting - and then he saw the text crawl at the bottom of the screen.

 _Raccoon City, Pennsylvania destroyed by missiles early this morning._ He couldn't hear the report, the crawl just repeated, and the crowd was erupting into bewildered arguments about what the hell happened and where the fuck was Raccoon City, and who named a city after goddamned raccoons anyway. Billy figured it had to be the feds, anybody else would have gone for something higher-profile, and that meant something nasty went down.

Rebecca had been right in the middle of it.

He forced the thought out of his head, concentrated instead on the increasingly argumentative crowd; the last goddamned thing he needed was for the Toronto police to start poking around. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, the place attracted a more laid-back crowd and Pennsylvania was a long way off, but he was still relieved when it emptied out at the end of the night.

Melanie was a little surprised when he turned down her offer of a drink at her place; he wasn't really in the mood for company, and he talked too easily when he'd been drinking anyway. He picked up some Chinese take-out on the way home, dropped onto his couch and turned on the TV, flicking through the news networks. He'd about given up when a special report broke into the regular programming.

"Come on, come on," he muttered as the reporter said something about repressed video and warned him about the images he was about to see. The video changed, dropped in quality, some local news team.

Then he heard the mindless moaning and reached for a weapon. Too loud, had to be a lot of them, maybe too many - his hand banged into the metal lamp and he startled back to reality.

"Jesus."

There were too many, there'd have been too many even if they'd been armed and ready, barely decayed adults and teenagers stained with piss and shit and blood, little kids with half their faces rotting off. The cameraman and reporter ran, tried to run, the camera fell into a bush and spared him the visuals. He still heard the screams, the mindless hungry moans, and the wet tearing sounds when they started eating.

The video cut out not long after, replaced by a series of still images - overrun streets, fallen barricades, flocks of crows, something like that damn reptilian monster. He stuffed the take-out in the fridge, appetite completely gone, and half-listened to the announcer going on about how the footage wasn't fake and had been smuggled out by a survivor, wondering vaguely how in hell anybody'd managed to survive when there were that damned many of them. Then he turned off the TV and turned on the radio, double-checked the door and the windows, and got a night full of bad dreams anyway.

He got to the bar early, did his usual security check, and rummaged through the old sheet music behind the bar, left over like the piano from the previous owner's delusions of grandeur. Christ, he was out of practice, and concentrating hard enough to only notice and dismiss the threat when everybody else started showing up.

"You play piano, Billy?" Melanie sounded damn surprised.

"Mom taught piano," he answered, still concentrating on the sheet music. Playing piano always had let him break a mess of tangled thoughts. "Made me learn."

"Looks like it stuck."

He finished the piece and turned to grin at her. "Guess so."

"Buy out every newspaper stand in the neighborhood?" she asked, tapping the stack of papers on the piano.

The grin faded. Raccoon was all over the newspapers, lead story everywhere. The place had been nuked for Christ's sake and the President hadn't said shit yet. Pennsylvania's reps and governor were howling for his head on a plate, places downwind of the fallout were screaming bloody murder about that, and nobody had any damn clue what happened. "Used to know a girl there."

"Girlfriend?"

He shook his head. Hadn't had a chance. "Nah." There'd been a couple of sidebars about the S.T.A.R.S.; half the Raccoon unit had been missing, presumed dead at the end of July and the other half suspended on suspicion of drug abuse. No names, nothing useful. "Lost touch with her a while back."

He shoved his papers and the sheet music back behind the bar before the manager came out of the office. The bar was packed all night, with twice as many assholes as usual and three times as many fights to prevent or break up. Melanie offered him a drink again and he took her up on it this time.

He grabbed the papers on the way home the next day along with some Indian takeout. The President had finally gotten off his ass and spewed bullshit about unexpected disasters and chemical spills. Nobody still had a goddamned clue, the S.T.A.R.S. organization wasn't talking, but somebody on the inside must've spilled their guts for the amount of information the reporter'd dug up - full profiles and career records. He skimmed the list of the dead - Edward Dewey, she'd called the guy on the train Edward - and the missing. Rebecca Chambers, biochemist and team medic, blather about her being a kid prodigy, missing since August, family refusing to comment.

He'd never been big on the 'no news is good news' line. Rebecca was missing, nobody'd even mentioned Umbrella, and nobody knew a damn thing about the T-Virus. Not that he knew much about it, either, and not that he had any damn proof to convince - proof. Shit.

He dug through the dresser until he found the journal he'd taken off the dead guy on the train. Pretty beat up and all, but readable enough even after getting soaked. He checked the paper with the S.T.A.R.S. article for the reporter's name and headed out after a quick shower and change of clothes. Half an hour at an office store, a few minutes borrowing a library computer with print access, a few minutes at the post office, and he sped home to hide the journal again before heading to work.

A week later, the Sunday paper had a huge feature section on the Raccoon disaster, including the biggest story on Umbrella yet, even some quotes from the photocopies he'd sent the reporter, right down to the T-virus name. Hell of a lot of "unexpectedly" dead people, a lot of crap that didn't surprise him in the least - some drug they'd been testing had destroyed a kid's kidneys and the company was still dragging out the lawsuit, security breaches at a site storing epidemic diseases, that kind of thing. He skimmed most of it, pausing at the rumors of a private military force with an island-based training facility - a year ago he'd have scoffed, but not so much now. The rest was a rehash of the original charges the S.T.A.R.S. team had made, some allegations about Raccoon's Chief of Police - rapist, corrupt, all-around asshole - and allegations against the rest of the city government. One hell of a clusterfuck.

Wasn't much way for him to find out what the hell had happened to her, whether Umbrella'd killed her or she was in hiding. If she wasn't dead, finding her'd just send her to prison and him back to his execution and he couldn't do a damned thing if she was. It hurt like a cracked rib, sharp and tearing, stronger and fresher than he'd expected it to be.

The rest of the S.T.A.R.S. survivors had disappeared about the same time Rebecca had. She probably wasn't alone, she was a survivor, and inexperienced or not, she wasn't any more stupid or reckless than he'd been at eighteen. Probably less.

"Good luck, dollface," he said, lifting his beer and smirking a little at how much she'd hate being called that. The smirk faded. "And watch your back."


	2. Chapter 2

"Chris! C'mere!"

Barry stared at the TV in disbelief as Chris ran out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist.

"The death toll is estimated to be in the thousands, possibly tens of thousands. Small towns in a ten-mile radius of Raccoon are still being evacuated as the fires spread. Local reports indicate that Raccoon had been out of communication for at least two days, possibly longer." There was a huge fire visible in the distance, behind the reporter and a shouting, sign-waving crowd as the in-studio anchor asked about early signs of trouble. "Yes, Tom. An explosion or series of explosions on the 28th, still unexplained, started a large brush fire. Area fire companies handling that fire noted apparently uncontrolled fires burning in the city at that time, were unable to raise anyone in Raccoon, and raised the alarm."

"Raccoon's gone." He shook his head as the announcer went on, not paying much attention - something about possible military involvement. Grill 13, he and Kathy'd eaten there dozens of times, the calamari was terrific. The park next to their house, where he'd played with his girls. Their _house_ , they'd bought it when Kathy'd been pregnant the first time, the first place they'd ever owned. She'd always planted more vegetables than they could eat, handed them out to everybody they knew.

"Outbreak." Chris' voice was flat with shock. "Jill was right, there was another lab. Where is she?"

They hadn't heard from Jill in days, longer than they'd expected her to be out of touch. "No idea," Barry said, thinking of the rhododendrons in his yard. Kathy'd grown them from cuttings his mother had given her. "I'll see what I can find out after I call Kathy. Go call Claire."

"I can't."

"She probably thinks you're dead." Kathy didn't know where he was, either, didn't know he'd left town weeks ago, probably had her hands full with the girls being scared and confused and he wasn't there, couldn't be there. He clicked off the TV and grabbed his coat.

"I can't risk it." Umbrella'd searched Chris' apartment, left Claire's school address highlighted on some paperwork, stolen some pictures of her along with the TV and stereo. Chris had barely spoken to Ryman until he got hold of Claire and found out she'd switched shifts with a friend at work. "If Umbrella thinks Claire knows where I am, knows anything-"

"Not even Claire'll forgive you that." Chris disappeared into the bunkroom and a few seconds later, Barry was out of the building. Kathy'd never forgive him if he didn't take the chance.


	3. Chapter 3

The sky was covered with heavy dark clouds, and the wind was really strong and really cold. Sherry punched the numbers into the payphone, then clutched her thin, oversized coat around her as it rang and rang. Claire moved, trying to block the wind a little, but it didn't work very well. When the receptionist finally picked up, he sounded unimpressed and put her on hold; she checked the change Claire had given her anxiously as the hold music played on and on. Maybe he didn't believe her. Maybe Aunt Kate wasn't at work yet. Maybe - no, no more maybes, maybe wasn't helping anything. Her chest felt tight and she started to get dizzy, and then Claire gave her a quick hug, and she could breathe a little better.

"Sherry?"

"Aunt Kate!" She felt warm all over suddenly, her heart beating fast, and her chest loosened up.

"Sherry, _where are you?_ Where's Annette - your mom and dad?"

"I-I'm in Maine. Mom and Dad - they - they didn't get out of Raccoon." Her eyes were stinging and her throat hurt, like it had yesterday, after she'd seen Raccoon burning. She'd cried for a long time. She wasn't a baby, she was twelve, she wasn't going to cry again. "I - can I come stay with you?"

"God," Aunt Kate said, her voice very small for a moment. Then her voice was strong and brisk again. "Of course you can. Maine? How - where in Maine? What's the nearest airport?"

"Bangor, I think," Sherry said. She dropped more coins into the payphone and fished the piece of paper John had given her out of her pocket, squinting to read his handwriting. "Yeah, Bangor."

"I see. Sherry, are you all right? What happened, why are you in Maine?" Aunt Kate's voice drifted slightly, she heard her talking to someone else about plane tickets.

"I'm okay, Aunt Kate. I - I was hiding in the police station, Mom told me to go there, but -" The zombies and the monsters had gotten everybody except the redheaded man who'd stabbed himself. "It - wasn't any better. Then Claire came and found me, she got me out of Raccoon. I think she knew somebody here, that's why we're here." She'd fallen asleep on the drive and had slept a lot the next couple days. She thought somebody - David or Rebecca - used to work with Claire's brother.

"All right, Sherry, do you have anything to write with?" Claire fished a pen out of her coat pocket; Sherry flipped John's note over to write down Aunt Kate's phone numbers, flight numbers and flight times and the hotel she'd made a reservation at. "God, I'm glad you're all right, Sherry. I'll see you tomorrow."

"S-See you tomorrow, Aunt Kate," Sherry said, and hung up, eyes burning.

Claire hugged her again, and said, "Come on sweetie, let's get back."

Sherry didn't say much on the drive, or when they got back, not sure where to start or what she even wanted to say. She couldn't stay here, even if she wanted to, she knew that, and she really wanted to see Aunt Kate. She sat on the cot in the room she'd been sharing with Claire and Rebecca, and took Claire's vest out of a box, wondering if she'd want it back. There were pockets on the inside, thin and small, and a strip of paper poking out of one of them. Sherry pulled it out absently, not really thinking about it, and turned it over.

Then she giggled in spite of herself. It was a strip of photographs from one of those photo booths, Claire and some guy mugging for the camera and smiling, faces crinkled up with amusement, all the decorations around the photo for Christmas. Maybe last year, because Claire didn't look much different.

She looked up as the door opened and Claire came in. "You okay?"

"Is that your brother?" Sherry held out the strip of photos.

Claire took it and laughed, her whole face lighting up when she smiled. "Yeah, that's Chris. He's not always a goofball." She sat down on the cot next to Sherry. "Most of the time he's pretty serious."

"Aunt Kate's like that," Sherry said. "Serious, I mean." She couldn't imagine Aunt Kate and Mom ever making goofy faces in a photo booth. Or Dad and Aunt Tracy. "Mom was too..."

Claire put an arm around her shoulders as Sherry sniffled. "It hurts a lot, huh?"

Hurt didn't seem like the right word. Sometimes she felt like she could just walk away and her body would fall over like a puppet. "Everything's gone."

"I know," Claire said, her voice catching.

It wasn't just Mom and Dad, or home, or - Sherry wasn't even sure what it was. Thinking about Raccoon being gone was like ... like trying to hold on to that lamp, the one Dad had said had a wire loose, all odd and shivery and twitchy. She leaned into Claire, looking at the photos again; Claire probably wanted to see her brother at least as much as she wanted to see Aunt Kate. "Can I keep your vest?"

"Yep, I gave it to you."

She should have known Claire wouldn't take it back. "Thank you." Claire stroked her hair for a little bit, not saying anything, until Sherry sat up to put the vest away again.

She told Claire a little about Aunt Kate, who had sent her rollerblades for her birthday and an invitation for Mom to bring her out to California for a week. Dad had been mad that he'd been left out, even though he and Aunt Kate didn't get along at all, and Sherry'd gotten in trouble when she got mad at him when he didn't want them to go. They'd gone to see Aunt Tracy in Chicago instead.

"They just talked about work and people I don't know." Her chest hurt again and it was hard to breathe. "Like I wasn't even there." It had been just like home. David didn't like having her around, but he didn't act like she wasn't there; if he asked her questions, he listened to the answers, like when he'd been asking her about Raccoon. She hadn't been able to tell him anything more than she'd already told Claire. "Is David really mad about us being here?"

Claire shook her head. "David's just got a lot on his mind. Come on, Leon's making lunch and you haven't eaten anything today."

Sherry still didn't feel very hungry, but Leon was frying up breaded chicken strips and baking fries, and there was soda and barbecue sauce. It wasn't anything like home, even when Mom and Dad were there. They started talking about music; Leon liked the Moody Blues. Mom had listened to them sometimes, usually late at night when Dad wasn't home and Sherry was supposed to be asleep. Claire liked Queen, and they got into a friendly argument about whether either of them ever listened to anyone modern, talking about people Sherry hadn't heard of; they asked her what she thought, and she said Weird Al, a little too embarrassed to admit to the pop music Dad poked fun at. They liked Weird Al too, and went on talking; Sherry ate her whole plate of chicken and fries.

She still hated washing dishes, but David wouldn't like his kitchen messed up, and she wasn't doing them alone. Claire and Leon went on talking, about movies and TV; she hadn't gotten to see very many movies, and Mom and Dad hated any kind of medical TV show. Leon said he felt the same way about cop shows, they got everything wrong, and Claire shot him a look before he really got into it. Sherry giggled and Leon pretended to be insulted.

They went into David's living room afterward. Claire and Leon read the papers and Sherry worked puzzles in a magazine Rebecca'd bought her; she didn't like reading the news, it felt all weird and scary and the stories about Raccoon felt fake even though she knew they were real, better than the reporters did. She wondered why Claire's brother hadn't told her he was leaving or where he was going, whether he'd try to call her dorm whenever he heard about Racccoon, what he'd do if she wasn't there.

"Will your brother call your dorm?"

Claire looked up at her, startled, and wasn't paying attention to her for a second. "I hope so. I gave my roommate a message if he does." There was something she wasn't saying, Sherry was sure of it, but she wasn't sure it was something she should ask. Claire was probably worried about where he was and why he'd gone away.

"Can I meet him sometime?"

"Maybe," Claire said, not the kind of 'maybe' that meant she was hoping Sherry'd forget about it, but the kind that said Claire really didn't know. "It depends on what kind of trouble he's in."

"Does he get into trouble a lot?"

"Oh, yeah. See, the problem with big brothers is that they get into all kinds of trouble without their kid sisters around to keep 'em in line."

"Bet he thinks it's the other way around," Leon offered.

Claire snickered. "He'd still be wrong." She smiled at Sherry. "I won't disappear on you, okay? It might not be very often, but I'll keep in touch."

"Promise?" She was acting like a baby again, it was embarrassing, but she felt like she had when Aunt Kate had answered the phone.

"Promise."

Sherry settled back with her magazine just as it started to rain.


	4. Chapter 4

She could remember, vaguely, when the chill in the apartment would have upset her. She dropped the mail on the table, hung her coat on the hook, and changed clothes.

Bill, bill, junk, junk, thick letter from her brother, bill, letter from someone she should remember but didn't. She dropped the letter on the table unopened. Her brother had sent train tickets for the anniversary and told her to answer her phone.

There were three new voicemails on her phone. She called him back.

*****

He hugged her, startled again by how thin and pale she was; after a second she hugged him back tightly, leaning her head against his shoulder. Just like - he didn't think about that. Not now.

He picked up her one bag. "Man, it's good to see you. Come on, you haven't even seen my new apartment yet."

She followed him out to the parking garage as he talked, slowly starting to talk back; it was always like this, ever since - for the last ten years. She hadn't seen the new car, either, the candy-apple-red convertible he'd bought in the spring, and even managed to make a joke about it. He tossed her bag in the trunk and headed out with the top down; the breeze blew color into her face and her expression lightened a little.

*****

His new apartment building was all glass and sharp angles. The apartment walls were white, the floors light-colored wood, and the appliances stainless steel; all the furniture was sleek and metal-framed. Even the shades on the windows were light-colored cloth, the rug in the living room cream-colored with a slightly darker border.

"Do you actually live here?" Nothing looked like it had ever been touched. There wasn't even any clutter. She hung up her coat on the stand, next to his.

He rolled his eyes at her. "I can clean up, you know," he said, and led her toward the back of the apartment, showing her the bathroom (which did look lived-in, disorderly towels and all), and the second bedroom. There was a bright purple blanket folded up at the end of the bed, and multi-colored daisies and carnations in a glass vase on the bedside table. She blinked suddenly, eyes stinging.

"You didn't have to - "

"What, clean up?" he said lightly. She rolled her eyes at him. "Hungry? There's a bunch of takeout menus in the kitchen."

*****

She'd gone quiet and withdrawn in the restaurant, what little color she'd regained fading until she looked like a wax statue again. At least their order had been ready quickly, and she'd perked up a little bit in the car on the way back, and much more over curry beef, rice and naan, with a salad he'd gotten at the grocery yesterday and a few glasses of wine. She'd fallen asleep on his shoulder while they watched old black-and-white movies.

She looked too much like she had in the hospital, her face blank and pale, her body slack and still. He had to watch her for a moment, study the faint traces of wrinkles, the hint of white in her hair, to remind himself that it wasn't 1998 anymore.

He still didn't remember driving from Chicago to Champaign; everything before he got to the hospital was a blur, and mostly he remembered getting there because he wasn't official next-of-kin yet and some idiot was having trouble with the idea of not being able to get authorization because Raccoon City was a burning ruin. Someone from the university had gotten it sorted somehow before he ended up in jail. She'd been staring at the ceiling, her eyes blank and empty, and he'd pulled a chair over and started talking, babbling, anything, trying to get some kind of response out of her.

That was blurry too, until she'd finally blinked, turned her head a little and looked at him.

He jumped at a gunshot on the screen, and she startled awake, looking around in confusion.

"Sorry." She smiled, a faint, real, sheepish smile. "I don't - sleep well this time of year."

"It's okay. I don't either."

*****

She'd been worn out from a day of playing tourist, half-dozing against him while watching old movies on the couch. The phone had rung, startling them both; he'd talked for a while, something about Mass.

"You go to Mass?" She hadn't been to Mass since ... since the Sunday before Raccoon was destroyed.

"Only once a year." His mouth twisted. "Father Paz at Santa Lucia says midnight Mass every year on the anniversary. There's a vigil until dawn afterward." He got up and opened a closet, looking through boxes until he found the one he wanted. There was another box on a high shelf, half-hidden under kitchen stuff, battered and dusty with the tape yellowed and cracked. "Here - what -"

He started to close the door, but she stopped him. "You kept it?" Her voice sounded strange.

"Yeah. I - couldn't open it, but I couldn't get rid of it."

That box. She'd been vague and disconnected from everything for days, ever since she'd seen the news, the endless repeating video of the fire. She'd forgotten her class almost as quickly as she'd left, and that box had been waiting for her. She reached up and took it off the shelf. "It's all right."

She felt cold and hot and shaky just looking at it, but not like before. Her mother had shipped it just before the first new murders. She'd taken it upstairs. The world had gone very dark, and very quiet, and she didn't remember anything else until she heard him talking in the hospital. The box had been gone when she'd left the hospital.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded, and put the box on the kitchen table.

*****

The world kept fading to a blur behind the candles, flames flickering in the draft. Only an occasional cough, or yawn, broke the silence of the church. She was sitting very still next to him, eyes fixed on the candles.

Parents, baby sister, aunt and uncle, cousin. Six candles, with family photos and their sister's drawing of the family cats from that box propped up in front of them. There'd been a bag of ten-year-old cookies and a letter telling her to study hard, they were all proud of her, and a couple of books she'd forgotten to take with her; at the bottom had been a sweater, because she'd been complaining about her dorm room being cold. She'd been pale and shaking afterwards, leaned into him with her head on his shoulder like she had after coming to in the hospital.

He watched the candles, attention drifting, trying to remember that last summer. She'd been nervous, he'd teased her some, helped her sort out stuff she wouldn't need or wouldn't fit in the car anyway. He'd spent time with Dad in his workshop, when he wasn't working, making a box for the baby sister's art supplies and a cabinet for Mom's baking stuff; Dad didn't treat him like a kid anymore, and the smell was familiar and comfortable. Father Paz spoke and he jerked, startled; he'd dozed a little.

Father Paz went on talking, naming the person each candle was for, as he put it out. She began to shake, bone-deep tremors, her eyes huge and wet, and she started to cry when he reached their family's candles. He held her tightly, the sobs shaking her entire body, as Father Paz put out each candle and the dawn light crept through the windows.

*****

The first thing she did when she got home was turn up the heat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah, a little explanation, perhaps. I'm assuming a population around 30000 and a high level of college-seekers (Raccoon being a company town for a field requiring higher education, and lots of it), and from that, about 200 or so out-of-town/out-of-state college students. So what happened to them when their city got blown to shit? ... okay, this isn't really an answer to that question, I guess. But that's where I started.


	5. Chapter 5

Rebecca pulled on a jacket against the chilly damp and took her coffee outside, away from everyone talking. At least the rain had moved off and the sky had cleared, though the half-moon didn't give much light. The T-virus mention in the Toronto paper had slipped past everyone else until she'd mentioned it was the first time anyone outside of Umbrella had used the term. It had taken her a few rereads to remember the journal from the train, and by then everyone else had been debating whether the reporter was being fed information by a disgruntled former Umbrella employee or being set up.

Nobody was likely to care about Billy Coen now, with Raccoon destroyed and most of the county burned down to the bedrock. Not about Jill, or Brad either, the S.T.A.R.S. written out of Raccoon's death so everybody could pretend it was a total surprise, nothing anyone could see coming, nobody's responsibility.

Billy would probably have something acid to say about _that_.

Nobody's responsibility. She hadn't contacted the CDC or NIH. She'd stayed in Maine instead of rejoining the Alphas. They hadn't heard from Jill since a week before the city was nuked, Claire had shot Brad in the police station, Chris and Barry had been out of touch since they'd reached Europe, thousands of people had died horribly, Raccoon was smoldering radioactive ashes, and she'd done absolutely nothing since the raid on the cove.

The coffee mug would make a lovely smashing sound and disintegrate into a thousand tiny pieces if it hit the concrete post at the edge of the porch, coffee dripping down like the stains on the walls in the mansion. Rebecca grimaced, and wrapped her hands tightly around the mug, giving up the fantasy. Besides, the noise would probably bring somebody outside to check on her.

The training facility, the mansion, Raccoon itself, all destroyed. Caliban Cove had burned to the ground the day after they escaped it. The bottom-feeders had disintegrated in the sunlight like leeches, and the Philadelphia team's photos were useless, too easy to claim they were faked.

No samples, no bodies, no evidence.

No witnesses. Leon would have been a good witness - unaffiliated with S.T.A.R.S., not affected by the initial outbreak - but he'd been around them too long; his story would be considered contaminated. Claire was Chris' baby sister and would be assumed to have been primed. Her team was dead. Karen and Steve were dead. David and John were already discredited, the Exeter Bravos hadn't been involved and were dispersed across the country, the Philadelphia team had been suspended and gone underground. Billy wasn't available.

He would just get handed back to the Marines for execution if she found him. Even if they let him out to testify, he wouldn't be any use; any half-competent lawyer could rip what little credibility he'd have to shreds, then use him to destroy hers. Assuming being on trial for aiding and abetting the escape of an alleged mass-murderer left her any credibility, even with her own teammates. They hadn't been there, hadn't met him; nothing she said would get past the lies she'd already told.

She pulled out Marcus' journal from her pocket, flipping through it absently. David and the Alphas hadn't thought it would convince anyone that Umbrella was dangerous now. But the T-Virus had been at the core of the company since the beginning; Umbrella had always been dangerous. She started when the door opened, reflexively reaching for her revolver, the snub-nosed .38 Barry had loaned her months ago, and lowering it as soon as she recognized David.

He moved carefully to shut the door. "Ah, there you are. I need you to verify an article on the S.T.A.R.S."

She flicked the safety back on and holstered the gun, heat rising in her cheeks. "Claire would probably know as well as I would," she said, and was promptly embarrassed by her tone, even if Claire probably did know the others better than she did. Chris had been on the team for two years, after all.

"She says otherwise, excepting her brother." He glanced at the journal. "Is that Marcus' journal?"

She nodded. "We're already being written out of the story. Nobody outside of Latham and that Toronto paper are even mentioning what we tried to report in July; the New York Times isn't even mentioning the team existed at all. Umbrella's probably planning to 'reveal' the whole disaster was the work of a rogue scientist, maybe a small group."

David frowned, thinking. "That would give them an excellent escape route. Claim that the outbreak started when this rogue or rogues lost control of their creation, they died at the beginning, and possibly throw a few expendable personnel to the government to reinforce their story."

Considering what Claire and Leon had said, it would be even be technically true; Raccoon had died because they'd tried to take the G-Virus from the Birkins, even though they'd been supporting and funding their research. "Play for sympathy, maybe make a big gesture like funding clean-up or something, and they're clean." She held up the journal. "This is the best evidence we've got right now to counter that. It's dated proof that the T-Virus has always been there." If Umbrella had ever known it existed, they'd have confiscated it from the training facility; it would be as much a shock to them as to anyone else.

"Let's discuss it with the others, after you verify that article." He turned to go back inside.

She paused a moment before following him, carefully not touching the chain of the dog-tags tucked under her shirt. It was long past time for her to get back to work.

 _Good luck, Billy._


End file.
